Subscribe to RSSVideo: Palace Hotel Now Rubble
This all that is left after the historic Aurora Tavern was pulled down in the early hours of this morning.
The 124-year-old hotel, opposite Sky City on the corner of Federal and Victoria St, now called the Palace, was being renovated to be made into a brothel when cracks were discovered.
Here is video of how it looked early this morning:
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Photos - Demolition early this morning
5 Comments
Really sad to see that go, it was a lovely old building and would have looked great after the planned (botched) upgrade.
I feels to me that Auckland’s cities always take the easy route out of demolition rather than trying to save buildings like this, the same has happened in ChCh. The developer should have been made to front up with the money to save the building which I’m guesing was collapsing due to their botched renovations. As it is this is basically a means for all developers to demolish historic buildings they’d rather not have to deal with.
Such a shame. I look forward to reading why it began to crack when it was being renovated but it had stood for 100+ years. I hope and I’m sure it wasn’t a case of making it crack so it was ripe for demo. What will go in it’s place?
“What will go in it’s place?”
Another glass box.
DanC, assuming he meant it, the developer’s comments in the Herald this morning are pretty miffed. He wanted to get an engineer up from Wellington to give a second opinion, but the Council weren’t interested.